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By Stuart A. Sanderson, president, Colorado Mining Association

Americans are paying record high prices for gasoline and relying too much on foreign countries for the gasoline they use. This summer, as we fill up our cars for vacations, Congress should create an energy policy that helps us on both counts -- reduce prices at the pump and help Americans become more self-reliant for our energy needs.

Few of us need convincing that we're paying a bundle at the pump. For proof that we are too reliant on foreign energy producers, consider the following.

Today, according to the federal government, the U.S. relies on foreign oil for 60 percent of its total consumption, a share that is projected to climb to 75 percent by 2030. And as world oil reserves dwindle, there is more competition from rapidly growing economies such as China's and India's. As recently as 1990, for example, China was a net oil exporter; in 2006 it was a voracious oil importer, consuming 40 percent of the entire increase in global oil production.

We Americans have talked about the need to declare our energy independence, but talk alone will not get us there. One partial solution is to conserve more energy by using less gas in our cars, less electricity in our homes and building more energy-efficient buildings and power plants. But conservation alone is not the answer for a country with a growing and increasingly mobile population.

To make a real impact on American energy independence we have to develop more of our coal reserves, the world's largest. The U. S. has 27 per cent of the world's coal reserves, more than any other nation. Colorado alone has proven reserves of 17 billion tons, eighth largest in the country. Colorado is also one of the leading producers of clean, high quality coal designated as "supercompliant" for use in helping utilities comply with air quality standards. Coal today provides half of the electricity Americans use and accounts for 72 per cent of the electricity generated in Colorado. And with proven technology already in use elsewhere in the world, coal can also be transformed into ultra-clean transportation fuels -- essentially an advanced diesel fuel that works in today's cars, trucks and jet engines.

Coal has gotten steadily cleaner over the last four decades and will be cleaner in the future. The advent of clean coal technologies has transformed coal as dramatically as the Internet has transformed the workplace. These technologies, installed in power plants, captures pollutants before they clear the stacks, and a recent federal study shows that coal-to-liquid fuels emit as little or less greenhouse gas than the diesel fuel made from imported petroleum they will replace. Although coal use for electricity generation has tripled since the 1970s, emissions from power plants have declined substantially, by up to 85% in some cases. The industry is also committed to reducing its carbon footprint, by developing carbon sequestration technologies.

The industry is also an active participant in FutureGen, a cooperative alliance between government and industry to build the world's first zero emissions coal power plant with carbon sequestration.

Energy experts often call the U.S. "the Saudi Arabia of coal." With our 240-year supply of coal, they have a point. It's time we use more of our most abundant fuel, and tell OPEC to keep more of theirs.

For more information about coal, please consult the CMA web site at www.coloradomining.org or the National Mining Association at www.nma.org

READER COMMENTS

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Sounds good. Use coal to make diesel and biomass and corn for ethanol than maybe we can tell the countries in the middle east who are jerks to there own people to stick it.

Sounds good. Use coal to make diesel and biomass and corn for ethanol than maybe we can tell the countries in the middle east who are jerks to there own people to stick it.

Sounds good. Use coal to make diesel and biomass and corn for ethanol than maybe we can tell the countries in the middle east who are jerks to there own people to stick it.

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